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Nigeria Targets Robotics to Boost Hardware Skills

By Fred Ohwahwa

What’s at stake?

In a quiet corner in Ibadan South-West, Nigeria, a technological revolution is brewing as researchers explore new ways to use AI and robotics to improve the nation’s agricultural, logistics and health sectors.

By Fred Ohwahwa

Situated in the quiet, leafy terrain of Iyaganku in the government reserve area of Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, is RAIN, short for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Nigeria. There, largely unnoticed, a quiet revolution is unfolding thanks to the enterprise of a native son seeking to bring technology, jobs and hope to his homeland.

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Nio premium EVs China Tesla battery swapping

Nio: The Anti-Detroit Hits the Accelerator

By Bolaji Ojo

[Editor’s note: This is the latest in our series examining China’s ascendant electric vehicle sector. We examine key players, their strategies and how China has come to dominate EV manufacturing, challenging Tesla and leaving established carmakers in the dust.]

What’s at stake?
Nio Inc. aspires to be the “Tesla of China.” While the American carmaker expects customers to sort out electric-vehicle charging, Nio is more hands-on by offering swappable batteries and batteries as a service. Nio and China hope to corner the EV/AV market via a combination of software and services rather than a mere product—no matter how groundbreaking. Will this expansive strategy succeed?

Nio Inc. makes electric vehicles. Just like Ford, GM and their European and Japanese counterparts. But that may be the Chinese manufacturer’s only similarity with Western competitors. Beyond making premium EVs, Nio is also emblematic of an innovative and increasingly high-quality Chinese automotive industry that carries enormous implications for the global automotive market.

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Baidu Apollo Robotaxi

Robotaxis Get Real in China

By Egil Juliussen, PhD

[Editor’s note: This is the third in a series examining China’s ascendant electric vehicle sector. We examine key players, their strategies and how China has come to dominate EV manufacturing, challenging Tesla and leaving established carmakers in the dust.]

What’s at stake?
China is a leader in developing autonomous-vehicle (AV) technologies, with robotaxis as the top AV use case. China is also strong in autonomous trucks, delivery vehicles, buses and vans. Seven leading Chinese companies that provide robotaxi software platforms are poised to begin driverless tests.

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Nio Battery Swapping

China Is About to Redefine EVs

By Junko Yoshida

[Editor’s note: This is the second in a series examining China’s ascendant electric vehicle sector. We examine key players, their strategies and how China has come to dominate EV manufacturing, challenging Tesla and leaving established carmakers in the dust.]

What’s at stake?
China played the long game to develop its domestic EV market and build a national automotive industry in the process. China has already locked up the supply chain for current-generation EV batteries and is changing EV usage patterns and consumer applications on its home turf. How will China’s EV accomplishments affect the still-developing EV market beyond its borders?

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China lithium-ion battery manufacrturing

China Owns EV Battery Manufacturing — For Now

By George Leopold

[Editor’s note: This is the first in a series examining China’s ascendant electric vehicle sector. We examine key players, their strategies and how China has come to dominate EV manufacturing, challenging Tesla and leaving established carmakers in the dust.]

What’s at stake?
Chinese manufacturers command the global electric-vehicle battery market. Indeed, about three-quarters of the world’s EV batteries are made in China. But competition is fierce, and the search for new battery chemistries based on plentiful materials may chip away at China’s lead.

The opening round of the strategic competition for electric vehicle battery dominance is over: China has won.

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automotive supply chain process

Shackled By the Automotive Supply Chain Crisis

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
Beefing up semiconductor production capacity alone won’t solve the supply chain crisis afflicting automotive OEMs and EV startups. The players must look at their internal processes and program management — or lack thereof — for answers.

Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the automotive industry has been one of the segments hit hardest and longest by the global semiconductor shortage.

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Pat Gelsinger executive team at Intel Corp.

Remaking Intel

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake?
In his first year as Intel’s CEO, Pat Gelsinger refocused the enterprise and swapped out the senior management team in a bid to restore the company to dominance. Now the world is watching to see whether Gelsinger’s handpicked managers and aggressive restructuring will succeed in equipping Intel to navigate a landscape that is shifting rapidly under its feet. Settle in, because it will be years before Gelsinger’s rapidly executed changes achieve their full impact.

Intel Corp. CEO Patrick Gelsinger, who rejoined the company in February 2021, is on a mission to secure the venerable microprocessor manufacturer’s future by knocking it down to its founding principles and rebuilding pretty much everything from there.

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Western exports controls on technology shipments to Russia in response to Ukraine invasion

Western Tech Sanctions on Russia Begin to Bite

By George Leopold

What’s at stake?
As the economic sanctions imposed by the West seek to cut off the Kremlin from funding to wage its war, there are signs that the unprecedented Western­ and East Asian cooperation on technology export controls is depriving Russian forces of tools to fight it. But those measures are most effective as long-game strategies, and Ukraine doesn’t have that kind of time.

Current and former U.S. officials overseeing Western efforts to cut off Russia’s access to dual-use technologies say those efforts are beginning to bear fruit as Moscow struggles to refit its battered military.

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